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When , lecturer at , began teaching her Academy Inquiry Seminars (AIQS) course—“What is a Book?: Art, Function, Form”—on campus, she hoped to offer students a more hands-on experience with various types of book objects.

Drawing from her personal archive work, Iammarino began taking students to special collection exhibits at Cleveland Museum of Art to experience first editions of printed works by William Morris’ Kelmscott Press—including handmade books from the 19th-century created in response to industrialization. There, she was introduced to Sabine Kretzschmar, director of the museum’s (EAC)—a teaching collection of over 10,000 art objects from around the world. 

By collaborating with Cleveland Museum of Art, Iammarino hoped to show—not just tell—students significant practices associated with book arts and making. Today, she helps individuals in the AIQS program investigate these concepts—such as textual remediation, cultural context and readerly engagement—by analyzing medieval manuscripts, 16th-century Persian poetry and other early works.

“By working with these objects first-hand, students gain an opportunity to experience the ideas of our class beyond seeing pictures in digital archives, books behind glass in exhibits or those spelled out in readings,” Iammarino said. 

During the 2024-25 academic year, those enrolled in the course had the opportunity to create an exhibit with the help of Kretzschmar, who shared a brief overview and history of numerous historical pieces. This project also enabled students to examine devotional books to observe how different purposes of religious texts affected certain artistic choices, from font size and margins to the use of gold leaf—a decorative technique that applies thin layers of gold to the edges of book pages. 

“We were able to look and carefully touch intricate wooden block art used as prayer books, a Japanese cloth book and so many other unique pieces,” said Hannah Chen, a second-year biomedical and material science engineering student with a minor in dance. “This experience opened my eyes to the power of how the function of written information affects its form and how both are equally significant in portraying a unified message.” 

Read on to hear insights from Iammarino, including how hands-on access to historical texts and art objects shape her students’ learning and the benefits of outside collaborations. 

Answers have been edited for clarity and length. 

Q. How does this collaboration enhance your research, teaching, or creative work?

In terms of my pedagogical research, sustained activities like this offer students alternative ways to show what they know besides the traditional, linear research essay. For the assignment associated with the EAC, students can show their understanding of recurring, enduring concepts from our class in ways that explore how arguments are created, supported and shaped.
 
In doing so, students are also developing their experiences with writing composition. For instance, in the exhibit assignment, students engage with one of the five canons of rhetoric: arrangement. Not only do they choose the order that these objects are displayed in, but their written descriptions of these objects extend their arguments about how these objects fit together under their chosen concept. 

Q. What are some of the most rewarding outcomes of this partnership?

Working with objects from this collection offers students a working version of controlled freedom. Students have the ability to choose what book objects they wanted to engage with within the chosen collection. This sort of controlled freedom encourages students to explore ideas and applications within a manageable sphere and [apply] problem-solving practices as they teach themselves how to curate these objects into a multimodal, digital exhibit.

Both institutions of learning leverage different points of access for knowledge acquisition. For museums, thematic exhibits and controlled viewings treat various art objects as examples of a phenomena or period. For universities, enduring concepts, theoretical ideas and abstract principles become lenses to view the world. Together, these approaches enhance how students engage with the examples and ideas they exemplify. Opportunities to explore museum spaces can be valuable variances to traditional classroom spaces, especially for first-year students new to campus and the University Circle area. 

Q. In what ways has working with a museum expanded or challenged your approach within your area of work?

The books’ topic of the course span a wide historical breadth ranging from early civilizations into the present-day. The challenge is always filling in the various knowledge gaps about these objects for students, mostly with regards to various moments in print and literary history. This challenge can be expounded when working with the texts available in the collection, works that I may not be first-hand familiar with. In this regard, this experience at the CMA is truly collaborative as I rely on Sabine and her knowledge of the collection to help fill in these knowledge gaps for students.